"But you see--you're not going to marry him!" smiled her father. "I tell you I am!" flamed Daphne. "I have given my word!" "And she'll keep it, too!" triumphed Kaire. "High-strung kids always do, somehow! Whatever else they smash--china, hearts, laws--they never seem to break their words!--not before they're twenty, anyway!" he grinned with sudden diablerie. "And Daphne is only eighteen!" "Hanged if you're not rather an amusing cuss!" admitted Bretton. Very coolly he narrowed his eyes to the insolent young face before him. "I--I recognize your charm! Two parts devil to one part imp--and all the rest of it. The mysterious fascination of your scar with every emotion you feel in the World traveling up and down its white track--in an open car! Truly, I'm sincerely sorry about your health!" [206] "Oh, quit twitting about my lungs!" snarled Kaire. "Lungs?" questioned Bretton with faintly raised eyebrows. "Lungs? Oh, dear me--there are several other things about your looks--besides lungs--that I don't like!" Mercilessly, but not maliciously, he jumped up and crossed to a spot directly confronting Kaire. "With your waggish humor," he said, "and your inherently sportsmanlike instincts, you might have made a pretty good lad if you'd only started earlier." Piercingly his eyes probed into Kaire's. "But my little girl," he said, "isn't--going--to pay--because you didn't start earlier!" With an oath Kaire sprang to his feet. "I'm not the only man in the world who's been wild!" he cried. "And you know it--if anybody does!" "You're the only man I think of at the moment," said Bretton, "who isn't pretty sorry about it when it comes to offering his stale hand to the first real woman of his life." "Is--that--so?" sneered Kaire.